An evaluation of modified silica nanoparticles’ efficiency in enhancing oil recovery of light and intermediate oil reservoirs

By Abbas Roustaei, S. Saffarzadeh, M. Mohammadi. 2013

205 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The role of nanoparticles in enhancing oil recovery from oil reservoirs is an increasingly important topic of research. Nanoparticles have the properties that are potentially useful for enhanced oil recovery processes, as they are solid and two orders of magnitude smaller than colloidal particles. This paper presents a comparison between the efficiency of modified silica nanoparticles in enhancing oil recovery from two different Iranian light and intermediate oil reservoirs. The mechanisms used to recover additional oil would be oil–water interfacial tension reduction and wettability alteration. Oil phase contact angles and oil–water interfacial tensions were measured in the absence and the presence of nano fluids’ different concentrations (1–4 g/L). Results showed that the interfacial tension reduces dramatically in the presence of nanoparticles for both light and intermediate oil. In addition oil phase contact angle results showed a transformation of rock wettability from water-wet toward oil-wet condition. However, these nanoparticles are more capable in the reduction of the interfacial tension and the alteration of wettability in the case of light oil reservoir. A comparison between recovery results indicated that these nanoparticles are more efficient in light oil reservoirs and produce more incremental amount of oil after primary and secondary processes.

Subfields: Materials Chemistry, Mechanics of Materials, Ocean Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/01023c97edc2551bba61f5cfe10d9c71cd8dd557

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In Materials Chemistry

In Mechanics of Materials

In Ocean Engineering

Citations in the corpus

A review on applications of nanotechnology in the enhanced oil recovery part B: effects of nanoparticles on flooding (2016, background): “However, these nanoparticles are more efficient in light oil reservoirs [11].”
Emergence of nanotechnology in the oil and gas industry: Emphasis on the application of silica nanoparticles (2017, background): “[96] to investigate the effectiveness of modified nanosilica in the enhancement of oil recovery from light and intermediate oil reservoirs.”
Metal oxide-based nanoparticles: revealing their potential to enhance oil recovery in different wettability systems (2015, background): “…alteration Introduction In recent years, most investigations have shown that nanoparticles (NPs) offer promise for future enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes in which silica-based NPs are most commonly used (Ju et al. 2006; Miranda et al. 2012; Roustaei et al. 2012; Hendraningrat et al. 2013a).”
Recent Advances in Nanoparticles Enhanced Oil Recovery: Rheology, Interfacial Tension, Oil Recovery, and Wettability Alteration (2017, background): “Similarly, polysiliconNPs treated with silane can change the wettability of the rock and have shown good results in water-wet formations [52].”